Jennifer and Needy - BFFs 4-Ever

I went to see Jennifer’s Body this past weekend.

Why? Because the trailer (shown below) looked sexy and I wanted to find out what the brouhaha was all about. For the entire past YEAR, Megan Fox and/or Diablo Cody have been talking about how amazing the movie was, how amazing Megan is in the movie, how amazing and beautiful and different Megan is in general, and how she is “not just another bitch in leggings out at the Chateau Marmont.”

After a while, I began tuning everything out. Megan has been on PR overdrive since the first Transformers film, which I’m sure led everyone at Fox Atomic to believe that Jennifer’s Body would be a major hit. Alas, it only made $6.8 million it’s opening weekend.

To be perfectly honest, I liked the movie. I liked it better than Cody’s previous screenplay, Juno, which featured a smartass who would NOT shut up. I personally like Ellen Page and think she is very talented, but she annoyed the hell out of me in that film.

The “smart alecky” lines (Cody’s trademark) in Jennifer’s Body didn’t seem as out of place, Megan Fox was very beautiful, Amanda Seyfried can truly act, and there was something inherently sexy about the entire thing.

I also liked how strong both characters were. Newsweek had an interesting blog entry about how Hollywood Apparently Can’t Make a Feminist Slasher Movie:

“… it’s hard to feel for Jennifer as horror’s first feminist when she’s basically written as a crass dude. Quoth the raven-haired, pool-water-eyed beauty, she has a “bigger d–k” than her pimply, pipsqueak male victims. She’s the locker-slamming, trash-talking, hallway bully. High-school boys are sissies, bashed as feminine: when they’re not crying at funerals or saying something sweetly perceptive, they’re writing creative nonfiction, wearing guy-liner, painting their nails, or posing for pre-prom pictures with their tiara’d little sisters. This movie is not genre-subverting so much as genre-reinforcing: it annihilates the symbolically feminine (emotion, intuition, sensitivity) in one big ketchup splatter, all for the gain of the symbolically male (physical violence, sexual aggression).”

While I agree with the above, I like the confidence Jennifer has (even though it may be displaced). I like how she doesn’t let guys take advantage of her (other than that stupid move she made at the beginning to get into the band’s van). I like how Needy (Seyfried’s character) eventually finds the strength within her to kill Jennifer. I like how both “grew up” within the course of the film from somewhat naive high school girls into young women who were aware of the inner power they had.

I’m not defending the movie as a feminist film, but I do think it contains elements of it.

Diablo Cody – you tried, but I’m going to have to say – you didn’t do a very good job.